General Discussion

Let me tell you, if you've never been to E3 you don't understand how hard it is to actually get to touch a game.  More than anything you end up talking about them even if you are surrounded by them.  Midway even has an entire arcade setup for people to check things out.

My day started pretty well and my first appointment wasn't until 3:30 in the afternoon with Lord of the Rings Online.  As much as I'm sure Dana was hoping to get an article squeezed out on it today, it's just not going to be possible to do it this morning.  It was 2 a.m. before I hit the sack last night thanks to the Escapist party, some great friends and associates and a very very evil DJ that kept making the people dance.  Oh yeah, I saw people fighting it and even with fighting it occassionally a little wiggle would come out.  In other cases people were having a great time dancing in the little club setup that we were at.  (Yeah I was one of them and no it wasn't because of the margaritas I had.)  After all day walking around E3 then dancing for a couple of hours after a lot of talking and shaking hands and yelling in people's ears, I was exhausted and hit the sack hard.

I did get to see a little bit more of Vanguard and am pleasantly surprised with it.  It seems they've learned a little something from the Horizons camp and taken some of the better ideas about crafting and made them even a little bit better.  I'm not saying the whole system is from Horizons, I just noticed a few interesting things like needing a special crafting table to do something.  However the best part is that there is a game within the game involving the crafting.  It takes being there and some skill to be able to get good at it and hopefully become an expert later on.

I only took one picture yesterday I think.  I'm terrible about forcing people to stand for pictures for me, I know.  I guess it's because I hate posing for pictures and feel like I'm pushing it on them.  But, I will in fact take more pictures today provided I remember to get myself some more batteries.

Funny enough I ended up having to rescue my stepson when he ended up showing at E3 and standing outside the doors looking like a lost puppy.  Apparently the WWE magazine (is that right?... I'm not a wrestling fan at all) said Rob Van Dam would be there to sign autographs but never once bothered to say it was a trade show only.  I missed the wrestler but I did get him some pictures of the paraphenalia and a couple of the preview booklets in regard to the new wrestling game that was coming out.  His mom had taken the day off special to try to do this for him.  I missed sitting in with Dana when he went to see Sanya over at Mythic and hear the real spiel on Warhammer Online.

After walking E3 and talking to so many people and asking questions the day was over pretty fast and I still hadn't seen UT2k7.

I'll give you this little teaser about Lord of the Rings Online, it looks much better than I expected and is a beefier title than I expected.  I think it may just end up the IP that doesn't just look pretty at night and wake up a horror.  The folks at Turbine are being very careful with how they treat the lore and the world that Tolkein has created and are in touch with the Tolkein Foundation pretty closely.

I'll most likely be able to do a better write-up for you all tonight after the MMORPG.com dinner and subsequent arguement and smack-down over what games we think were the very best this year.

It's been a much much better E3 this year than previous between the rules on booth babes and the noise level reduction.  I think the only place people are really losing their voices are at the loud parties.  I think that's a much better excuse to get temporary laringitis.

It's great to see Lord of The Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar. As I browsed through the site it truly is turning into something unique. It seems a lot of people, including me, has underestimated Turbine. After the first delay I thought LoTR Online was a disaster waiting to happen. I'm glad I was wrong, the developers are really pulling through. Their E3 trailer was okay, maybe I didn't watch the right one. I'll look back at Game Trailers.

The game play of UT2k7 was lightning fast to me. Faster than UT2K3, the last one I played, it seem hectic. Then again, I never played UT2k4. Yeah I know. I'm doing myself a great disservice by not picking it up as an FPS fan. I'll definitely check out UT2K7 though.

Thanks for the heads up Sachant! Hope you get home okay.